


Wounds to Scars

by Shadsie



Series: Robin and Jerome's Excellent Adventures [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: A sequel to The Gift of a Name, First Aid, Force Feeding, Gen, Horde Clone Physiology, Horde Prime was awful, It is helpful to read The Gift of a Name first., Madame Razz is mostly a cameo, Rescue, Survival, The Whispering Woods, The dangers of the Whispering Woods, hive mind memories, small mention of torture under Horde Prime, the effects of exposure, wilderness rescue, wounding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26668159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: Robin and Jerome, the self-appointed name-givers and funeral-directors for fallen Horde-clones, stumble upon a brother who appears to have been killed by the rigors of the wilderness.  As they make ready to assess which one among the many he was, they discover that he is still alive - weak and in need of help.Unfortunately, their nameless brother does not take their attempts to save his life well.
Series: Robin and Jerome's Excellent Adventures [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940374
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33





	Wounds to Scars

**Wounds to Scars**  
  
  
They hated when they found someone like this.   
  
One of their brothers lay in the wild grass and weeds, uniform dingy and ripped and no longer form-fitting. His waist was sunken-in and the skin on his face was drawn-tight. A hand was gripped over the grass in a stiff claw.   
  
Robin and Jerome dealt with the Horde-clones that had fallen in battle, but they dealt with these ones, too – the more recent dead, fallen from exposure in wilderness areas. In the Kingdom of Snows, freezing to death came quickly. In the Crimson Waste, the fallen had as often as not displayed signs of heat-stroke that had them dead within a day, having died as quickly as those that had suffered war-wounds.   
  
Today, the two granters of burial-names had been roaming the Whispering Woods. The trees parted for them and glowing, magic-powered insects had led them to this clearing. The old woman they met along the way had assured them that the forest knew that they had good hearts and wanted to help them. They were merely trying to take a shortcut to Bright Moon when they had gotten lost and had been grateful to find the woman’s hut to ask for directions. She told them that the forest would lead them where they needed to go and that they needed to meet someone because “Look-Ee” had told her. Neither of them had the foggiest who Look-Ee was. Perhaps he had found the poor chap they were looking at and decided to let one of the locals know where he was should they come around. Robin was surprised that they had that level of fame, apparently. Getting lost in the forest wasn’t on their itinerary. In any case, the pie that she’d given them both as a lunch was delicious. 

Jerome licked a bit of lingering filling off of the side of his mouth as he approached the body, wishing beyond anything that their fellow had found the old woman before finding his fate. The Whispering Woods had been kind to them, but not to him. It hadn’t even been as quick to deal its death as the Crimson Waste did to their lost fellows or the frozen north, for there were signs of struggle, crawling in the mud, grass about the meadow ripped up in clumps as if the now dead man had been trying to eat some of it for moisture or sustenance. He’d likely been out here for weeks, roaming in circles, slowly dehydrating or weakened by the morning cold.   
  
Robin readied his plug-cable. “Should your or I do the dive this time?” he asked his companion.   
  
Jerome jerked back. The side of the clone on the ground moved. The clawed hand over the grass twitched.   
  
“Our brother is still alive!”   
  
Robin immediately went into action. He touched the man’s face and his throat and nodded to Jerome to help him roll him over. “Let’s sit him up against that tree,” he said, “Get some water in him.”   
  
Jerome pulled a small vial filled with a green substance out of pocket on the trousers that he wore beneath his robes today. “He will likely need this.”   
  
Robin nodded and retrieved a small syringe out of his hip-satchel. He held the nameless brother’s right arm out, tore the last bits of the shredded uniform-sleeve off of him to expose the port in the crook of his arm and made short work of loading up the syringe with amniotic-fluid and injecting the port.   
  
Jerome looked warily at the torn places in the field. A chaotic scene played in his mind. He was on a grassy planet, one of a flock. Their allotment of feeder-fluid had run out. Instinct took over – the brothers suddenly engaging in the unorthodox activity of putting things in their mouths. Chirping things on the ground that sprang and flit were caught in sharp-clawed hands. Seedy grass-heads were bitten and masticated and caught between fangs. Solid food was a privilege for Horde Prime. Everyone felt the heresy and feared over their hunger-born sins, but Prime was forgiving as soon as victory was secured.   
  
Another impression flashed though his brain, less an image, more of a feeling. He grabbed his stomach. Jerome was grateful that he was never directly a part of it, but all clones had stray memories of each other through the once hive mind. There were many reasons that Prime had given them sharp teeth – for combat, for aesthetics, and, occasionally, he took pleasure in selecting a brother or two to come to his table to be fed delicacies; gelatins, breads, fruits and meats from around the galaxy - until their stomachs stretched in pain and they were tempted to refuse more bites, but dared not until he allowed them leave. It wasn’t particularly a punishment, just a random pleasure for Prime to watch them groan, vomit and sometimes even bleed.   
  
“Jerome!” Robin said curtly, snapping him out of his day-mare, “Unbuckle your canteen!”  
  
Robin shifted back as Jerome approached the moaning clone, canteen in hand. The unconscious man’s head was leaned back on the supporting-tree, his mouth open in a listless gape. Jerome carefully lifted the top of the canteen to the too-dry mouth and cupped one hand beneath a chapped lower lip to shakily pour just a tiny bit of water over sharp green teeth _. Not too much_ , he thought to himself. A rescue could easily turn into an accidental choking. The clone’s throat flashed as he gulped down the water, earning a relieved sigh from Jerome as he was swallowing it properly. The unnamed brother was already looking slightly healthier. The infusion of amniotic-fluid was already working. It was a good thing, after all, Jerome decided, that he and Robin bothered carrying it for emergencies even though they were currently acclimated to Etherian food-sources and found that they preferred certain fruits and vegetables to their old diet.   
  
The nameless clone cracked his eyes open slowly.   
  
“Stay at rest, brother,” Robin commanded.   
  
“Easy. Just try to drink a little more. We’re here to help you,” Jerome assured.   
  
The clone scrunched his brow, glared at Jerome and with a mighty snarl, brought up one hand full of talons and slashed Jerome clear across the face. Jerome’s spectacles fell to the ground immediately. Before he could register what had just happened, the nameless one’s other hand slashed him the other way. Jerome recoiled, grabbing his nasal-bridge. The clone rose up, ready to pin the injured man to the ground, but Robin tackled him and held his arms fast.   
  
“Easy!” he barked. “We are trying to save your life, brother!”   
  
The brother struggled, but Robin had little trouble with him in his weakened state. “Traitors!” the clone shouted. “Horde Prime shall hear of this and his wrath shall burn hotter than one-thousand suns!”   
  
“Horde Prime is gone!” Robin shot back, holding their rescue in a disabling hug. They struggled on the muddy ground like a pair of angry serpents.   
  
Jerome held his face with one hand while he probed on the ground for his eyeglasses with the other. Blood ran down from between his fingers.   
  
“Can you see?!” Robin yelped in alarm even as he tried to subdue his snarling captive.   
  
Jerome took his hand away and blinked back blood. “There is no damage to my eyes,” he assured his friend, “but I cannot find my glasses!”   
  
“DEFECT!” the nameless clone screamed. “Cannon-fodder! Sinner!”   
  
“Now, now,” Robin jokingly scolded him, “No need for such nasty words. We just saved you. If you’ll just calm down…”  
  
The clone tried to twist around in Robin’s arms. He bared his teeth in a fanatical smile. “You! Your eyes, as bad as the other one’s! Your hair! You are both out of uniform!”  
  
“Yes, we’ve been out of uniform for some time. You get used to it. We’ve got more amniotic-fluid. We can find a place to clean you off. You’re not exactly presentable, are you?”   
  
Robin hoped that this would snap his brother to attention – the sudden realization that he was in a highly imperfect state, to say the least. If this brother still believed that Horde Prime was watching, he should want to stop being disheveled immediately. Offering cleansing and conditioning might be a path forward.   
  
The clone simply growled and tried to bite his throat. Robin sighed. “I didn’t want to have to do this,” he said with a grimace.   
  
He flipped over his sickly opponent with ease and jammed two fingers straight into the port on the back of his neck. The nameless brother suddenly stiffened. Robin carefully arched the tip of a talon to caress the nerve-data switch for sleep. The clone’s eyelids drooped and his body relaxed as he slipped into a peaceful unconsciousness.   
  
It may not have been the nicest of actions, but his way of doing it was far less prone to cause any permanent damage or pain than what some Etherians had done when they’d discovered “nape of neck” as a weak-point on Horde Prime’s progeny. Still, this one would have to be watched over the next few days for any signs of infection. After the struggle on the ground, Robin worried that his hands might not have been the cleanest.  
  
“Jerome,” he said, turning to his much friendlier brother, “Allow me to take a look at your wounds.”   
  
Jerome had just located his glasses. He smiled in relief to see that the lenses were intact, but pouted as soon as he discovered a hinge on one of the frames to be loose. He wiggled the bent piece in a curious circle. Replacing the frames would be a far more simple matter than grinding new lenses, but he would have to contend with distant and mid-distant objects being a blur in his world until they got back to civilization and could find a repair-shop that was either a part of the Clone Habitation Program or was willing to take anything they’d have to barter. Jerome knew of at least one general store in Thaymore that traded for the shiny stones that he and Robin found every now and again.   
  
Blood dripped down his face and onto his outer-clothing. He had been blatantly ignoring it in favor of being distraught over his eyewear. Robin was upon him, cupping his cheek and dabbing at the scratches with a cloth soaked in water from the canteen.   
  
“Hold still,” he commanded. Jerome complied. “Oh, these are deep. Not good.”   
  
“Our claws for our skin,” Jerome said.   
  
They both issued a little grunt of affirmation. They were beings born of space, soldiers engineered to take on almost any kind of condition, including, occasionally, very short stints in the vacuum of the Void. In other words, Hordesmen were tough. Barring genetic anomaly and disease, their skin was quite resilient and was especially thick over the head and face. Their eye and chin-markings were grooves that helped it stretch with facial movement. There wasn’t much that could damage a clone-soldier in the head and face (save their single noted and generally guarded against all-but-Prime weak-spot). Their fingernails were thick and sharp. A Horde-clone could scratch steel if they wanted to and Jerome’s steel-strong skin had been fairly deeply cut.   
  
Robin looked and gently dabbed. “How much does this hurt?” he asked matter-of-factly.   
  
“Not much, actually. It stung when he did it, but it isn’t bothering me that much anymore.”   
  
“That is not a favorable sign,” Robin intoned. “The tears went past the surface-nerves. You may have deeper damage to the nerves. Your face does not feel numb, does it?”   
  
“Not particularly, no.”   
  
“Good.”   
  


“Hey…Robin? You don’t see bone, do you?”   
  
“No.”   
  
Jerome’s shoulders relaxed at that news.   
  
“We must stem the bleeding. Hold the cloth to your face and I’ll unwind some bandages.”   
  
“Good thing Princess Scorpia insisted we shouldn’t travel without a first aid kit.”   
  
“Indeed.”   
  
Jerome peeked out from behind the wet cloth as Robin rolled out some gauze between his hands. “Wait! Hey! You aren’t going to wrap that all the way around my head, are you?”   
  
“Of course I am. You’re losing too much fluid.”   
  
“That means wrapping it around my eyes! It’s bad enough that I have to wear glasses! I don’t want to be blind!”  
  
“I’ll guide you. You have nothing to worry about.”   
  
“But we have a brother to deal with!”   
  
“He’s not going anywhere for a while.”   
  
“No! No! Don’t blindfold me! Please!”   
  
Robin was taken aback by the fear in his brother’s voice.   
  
“Alright,” he said with a sigh. He looked back at the sleeping clone in the grass. It was bad enough that he’d already violated the will of one of his kind today. “We’ll find a way to seal the wounds while allowing you to peek out.” He experimentally wound the bandaging around Jerome’s head without touching the skin and squinted at a few ways until he found a path to winding above the brow and below the eyes in such a way as to create something of a mask. The bridge of Jerome’s nose kept seeping blood, so Robin applied a small bandage with tape there. At the end of it, Jerome still had sight and the wounds had stopped their flow. Robin even cleaned off Jerome’s glasses and managed to tape the broken part of the frame into some of the bandaging, allowing him to wear them.  
  
Jerome smiled at this. “You’re a genius.”   
  
Robin held up a finger. “Remember Princess Entrapta’s words about necessity giving rise to invention.”   
  
With that, Robin pinned the arms of the unconscious, nameless clone behind his back as carefully as possible and wound copious amounts of medical tape to bind the wrists. He nodded and Jerome helped him flip over and pick up the (thankfully still living) body, sliding his hands beneath the man’s arms. Robin took the lead, taking the sleeping man by his feet.   
  
“Where are we taking him?”   
  
“The old woman said that the forest would lead us to where we needed to go,” Robin said. “If the woods take us back to her home, perhaps she’ll let us rest for the night. After that… I… well; I think we should head to Dryl. It is the best home for our brother right now.”   
  
Jerome’s ears dipped as they walked, carrying their burden as gently as they could. Said burden was now loudly snoring. “He must have been out here since the invasion just wandering… lost. Why didn’t these woods help him?”   
  
“If what the woman says is right, the trees protect her. The magic here… I don’t understand it either. Given his reaction to us, he surely would have tried to hurt her.”   
  
“So we’re taking him right to her?!”   
  
“He is weak and bound. We are also present. No harm will come to her now. We’ll take watch.”   
  
“If you say so.”   
  
As the trees made way for them, a scent of some sort of broth was carried on the air. Jerome did not know if the stomach-growling he heard was his own, Robin’s, his newly-found brother’s or all three of them, hungry at once.   
  
A familiar figure greeted them with a wave of her broom. “Right on time! I’ve been expecting you!” she said. “Come in! Come in!”   
  
The rest of Jerome’s night was spent testing their elderly friend’s experimental healing-ointments as Robin babysat their captive. He didn’t mind. A little amniotic-fluid helped a rather dubious stew go down and luckily for him, the little old lady was an expert at eyeglass-repair from “ages and ages” of taking care of her own. He would bear the marks of this day for the rest of his life, but he was okay with that, too.   
  
  
  



End file.
